2015 has been a great year so far for Portugal’s retail real estate sector, especially in Lisbon, with investment up 50% in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2014.
According to a recent report, it’s mostly thanks to American investors, who account for 64% of all retail real estate investments in Portugal – around €334 million out of the €522 million invested in the country.
In May, American real estate investment group Blackstone announced that it had bought two malls in Portugal, the Almada Forum and Forum Montijo. The deal was reported to have been worth around €200 million – €100 million for each mall.
On the other hand, Portuguese investors only account for 5% of the money invested in the country’s commercial real estate sector.
The data was included in a report released earlier this week by Worx Real Estate Consultants.
Ricardo Quaresma from Worx’s Capital Markets department says that the current “macroeconomic situation in Europe” will help Portugal’s real estate sector stay on a roll.
He guarantees that “Portugal, like Europe, will continue to grow and benefit from the confidence of investors”.
In fact, further data from Worx’s report shows that investment in European retail real estate is also up by 16%, with the largest booms registered in Milan (+347%), Berlin (+127%) and Munich (+57%).
Still, Worx says it does not expect the sector to do better than in 2007, when the European commercial real estate market generated over €90 billion worth of investment.
